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Politics

James V. DeLong on Ending "Big SIS" (The Special Interest State)

Nick Gillespie and Joshua Swain | 7.3.2012 12:45 PM

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"Obamacare is not, as one judge says, a national solution to a problem," argues James V. DeLong. "It's 2,000 pages…of special-interest-written law."

As such, it exemplifies what DeLong, a long-time Washington insider who has worked for many think tanks and government agencies, denounces as "Big SIS" or the "special-interest state." In his scathing - and utterly convincing - new book, Ending Big SIS and Renewing the American Republic, Reason Contributing Editor DeLong traces how "the political system creates economic advantages for special interests and then demands that part of the profits be fed back into the political system, where they are used to enhance the power of the political incumbents."

Whether the topic is defense spending, agricultural subsidies, health care, or the financial sector, DeLong documents the pervasive rot at the core of Washington's way of doing business - and provides ideas for cutting Big SIS down to size.

For more information on the book and DeLong, go to here. For his Reason archive, go to here.

About 6 minutes. Produced by Joshua Swain. Interview by Nick Gillespie. Camera by Meredith Bragg, Jim Epstein, and Swain.

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NEXT: Florida Judge Orders Release of Elderly Man Serving 20 Years for Firing Two Warning Shots

Nick Gillespie is an editor at large at Reason and host of The Reason Interview With Nick Gillespie.

Joshua Swain was a producer for "Stossel on Reason" and Reason TV. A Virginia native, he attended George Mason University.

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